Review of cathodic arc deposition technology at the start of the new millennium

The vacuum cathodic are has been known as a means of producing coatings sin ce the second half of the 19th century. This makes it one of the oldest kno wn vacuum coating techniques. In the last century it has been recognized th at the copious quantities of ions produced by the process provides certain coating property advantages. Specifically, ions can be steered and/or accel erated toward the parts to be coated. This, in turn, can provide enhanced a dhesion, film density, and composition stoichiometry in the case of compoun d coatings. The ions generated by the cathodic are have high 'natural' kine tic energy values in the range 20-200 eV, leading to enhanced surface mobil ity during the deposition process and even ion subplantation. In many cases , dense coatings are achieved even when the ions arrive at non-normal angle s. The ion energy can be further manipulated by the plasma immersion biasin g technique. Macroparticle contamination has been alleviated by a variety o f novel plasma filters. The purpose of this review is to describe recent de velopments in macroparticle filtering and are control. These developments p romise to broaden the range of applications to the semiconductor, data stor age, and optical coatings industry. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All righ ts reserved.